Sapphire Breathwork. I continue to love my work as a psychologist and value psychotherapy highly. I feel fortunate to help people in the process of life—moving through it, adapting and growing, meeting myriad challenges in myriad ways. At the same time, both professional and personal life have taught me that sometimes we need a “something more” to fully evolve beyond the strong, especially traumatic, bonds and associations of our past, our deep learnings and experiences. I have found that breathwork offers one such route.

The breath has been used for centuries in traditional medical and spiritual traditions throughout the world. Yogic traditions, for example, offer breathing practices for calming, for alertness, and for preparing to meditate.

More recently, breathwork emerged in the later twentieth century as a means of self-help or transcendence. Rebirthing, and then holotropic breathwork, to name two popular types, attracted people for emotional release or transpersonal experiences.

Modern breathwork styles, such as circular connected breathwork, resemble holotropic but also differ significantly. Mostly the differences arose as we all learned more about the widespread and damaging effects of trauma. Modern methods respect the need for care and safety, in order to prevent any kind of retraumatization. They allow people much more control over the intensity of their experiences. They allow people more autonomy in integrating and making sense of their own insights and emotional experiences.